But yes, there was one task which was yet missing there – one to automatically create a Win32 installer. The steps to produce that had been so far:

1. enter the to-be-packaged version in the InnoSetup script file
2. convert the supplied text files from Unix to DOS line endings, while giving them a .txt extension
3. call the InnoSetup compiler on the script file and create the executable

Especially the first and second action looked hard to automate, given the fact that Windows does not come with a rich set of tools to process text streams – and requiring a Cygwin installation just for using sed seemed awkward to me. Obviously other people had similar problems before and somebody proposed to emulate sed with a VBScript which would be executed by the Windows Scripting Host (WSH). Wow, cool thing – if I’d just remember my broken Visual Basic knowledge. But didn’t Microsoft have this Javascript Look-a-Like, JScript? Shouldn’t this be executable as well?

Apparently it was and I sat down to hack an improved JScript sed version:

var patterns  = new Array();
var replacements = new Array();
var argcount = 0;

for (var i=0; i<WScript.Arguments.length; ++i)
{
    pat = WScript.Arguments(i).split("/");
    if (pat.length != 4)
        continue;

    patterns[argcount] = new RegExp(pat[1]);
    replacements[argcount] = pat[2];  
    ++argcount;
}

while (!WScript.StdIn.AtEndOfStream)
{
    var line = WScript.StdIn.ReadLine();
    for (var i=0; i<argcount; ++i)
    {
        line = line.replace(patterns[i], replacements[i]);
    }
    WScript.Echo(line);
}

Now the only thing what was left was to fiddle around with the WSH command line tool cscript and to combine everything for a proper QMake target. Here we go:

DOCFILES="NEWS README README.driver COPYING"
...
win32 {
    isEmpty(QTDIR):QTDIR           = "c:\Qt\4.6.2"
    isEmpty(MINGWDIR):MINGWDIR     = "c:\MinGW"
    isEmpty(OPENSSLDIR):OPENSSLDIR = "c:\OpenSSL"
    isEmpty(ISCC):ISCC = "c:\Program Files\Inno Setup 5\ISCC.exe"
    
    win32setup.depends  = make_first
    win32setup.target   = win32setup
    win32setup.commands = \
        cscript //NoLogo res\win32\sed.js \
            s/@@VERSION@@/$${VERSION}/ \
            s/@@QTDIR@@/$${QTDIR}/ \
            s/@@MINGWDIR@@/$${MINGWDIR}/ \
            s/@@OPENSSLDIR@@/$${OPENSSLDIR}/ \
            < res\win32\guitone.iss.in > res\win32\guitone.iss && \
        ( for %%f in ($$DOCFILES) do \
            cscript //NoLogo res\win32\sed.js \
                s/\n\$$/\r\n/ \
                < %%f > %%f.txt ) && \
        \"$$ISCC\" res\win32\guitone.iss && \
        ( for %%f IN ($$DOCFILES) do del %%f.txt )
    
    QMAKE_EXTRA_TARGETS += win32setup
}

So if you know enough Javascript you can probably emulate whatever tool you're missing on Win32 without having to depend on any external dependency. Very cool!

While debugging the issue I hooked into QApplication::notify(QObject *, QEvent *) and noted that a QCloseEvent was send to my application… wait, what? A QCloseEvent? Yes, I also thought that these kinds of events would only be send to widgets, namely, top level widgets, but I got one for my application, and Qt plainly ignored it. So I went further ahead and tried to quit the application directly when the event occured, similar to this

bool MyApp::event(QEvent * ev)
{
    bool eaten = false;
    switch (ev->type())
    {
        // other stuff ...
#ifdef Q_WS_MAC:
        case QEvent::Close:
        {
            quit();
            eaten = true;
        }
#endif
        default:
            eaten = QCoreApplication::event(ev);
            break;
    }
    return eaten;
}

The complete list of changes is as always listed in NEWS. A Mac OS X binary is also already available, a package for Windows will follow tomorrow.

I’m still looking for translators – if you’re interested, please drop me a note.

1. How can I auto-expand the root node of a QTreeView whenever the view is resetted?
2. How can I restore the expansion / root state of a QTreeView when a model filter cleared all the items out before, effectively resetting the view as in 1.?

After a lot of struggling and lots of debugging I think I found a solution for both problems, which are slightly connected.

To get the auto-expansion feature, I connected the layoutChanged() signal of the model to a timer in my view, whose timeout() signal then again called the following slot:

void MyTreeView::delayedLayoutChanged()
{
    QModelIndex index = model()->index(0, 0, QModelIndex());
    expand(index); // or alternatively: setRootIndex(index);
}

This simply takes the first element of the model and expands it. Why the trick with the timer? Well, apparently the layoutChanged() signal is already processed internally by QAbstractItemView or QTreeView and its implementation resets the view state completly – which is of course problematic if it gets executed after our own slot. A single-shot timer with an interval of 0 ms is enough here to make Qt use the next event loop cycle and do the right thing for us.

Now, things get more complex if you have a QSortFilterProxyModel attached to your tree view – imagine one of these fancy find-as-you-type inputs. If a user enters a search word which clears out all items from your current view and then resets the input again to see the original view, the view eventually gets a layoutChanged() signal as well, but because of the clearing you may have lost the expansion level in which the user was before!

QPersistentModelIndex is here for the rescue. All you have to do is remember the model index you previously used to expand your view and use that instead of the static one if it is still valid:

QPersistentModelIndex MyTreeView::lastExpansion;
void MyTreeView::expandSomething(const QModelIndex & index)
{
    lastExpansion = static_cast(model())
        ->mapToSource(index);
    expand(index);
}
void MyTreeView::delayedLayoutChanged()
{
    QModelIndex index;
    // is the item still part of the source model? 
    // (important for dynamic source models)
    if (lastExpansion.isValid())
    {
        index = static_cast(model())
              ->mapFromSource(lastExpansion);
    }
    else
    {
        index = model()->index(0, 0, QModelIndex());
    }
    expand(index); // or alternatively: setRootIndex(index);
}

While QPersistentModelIndex and QModelIndex are two distinct classes, the Trolls made them easily interchangable without special casting magic.

Note that you always need to save the source index and never the proxy index which might be invalidated if it is removed from the view. Things get of course even more complex if you have not one, but two proxy models which filter your view…

Outstanding news of this release:

• Synchronization with other monotone nodes is no possible
• Workspace action implementation almost feature-complete (add, drop, revert, rename, ignore, unignore and update finally work)
• guitone can now create new monotone databases and setup new projects
• Much improved key management with the ability to change the passphrase of keys, filter the key output and also drop keys
• Many more bugfixes and smaller improvements as well as stabilization of the codebase

For a complete list of changes please check the NEWS file. I’ll try and prepare a Windows binary in the next couple of days, but probably won’t get to that before Wednesday, so if you want to help out, drop me a note. A binary for Mac OS X should arrive shortly as well.

Now, on Qt’s side of things using SSL is rather easy as well, the only thing you have to do is give the setHost method another parameter:

QHttp * con = new QHttp();
con->setHost("some.host.com", QHttp::ConnectionModeHttps);
con->get("/index.html");
// connect to QHttp's done() signal and read the response

1. Connect to QHttp’s sslErrors(...) signal to the QHttp::ignoreSslErrors() slot. This, of course, pretty much defeats the whole purpose of an SSL connection, because the user is not warned on any SSL error, so also legit errors (certificate expired or malicious) are just ignored. (*)
2. Make the root certificate of CAcert known to the local setup, so the verification process can proceed properly.

I decided to do the latter thing. This is how the code should now look like:

QHttp * con = new QHttp();
QFile certFile("path/to/root.crt");
Q_ASSERT(certFile.open(QIODevice::ReadOnly));
QSslCertificate cert(&certFile, QSsl::Pem);
// this replaces the internal QTcpSocket QHttp uses; unfortunately
// we cannot reuse that one because Qt does not provide an accessor
// for it
QSslSocket * sslSocket = new QSslSocket(this);
sslSocket->addCaCertificate(cert);
httpConnection->setSocket(sslSocket);
con->setHost("some.host.com", QHttp::ConnectionModeHttps);
con->get("/index.html");
// connect to QHttp's done() signal and read the response

(*) One could, of course, check the exact triggered SSL error from QSslError::error(), in our case this could be f.e. QSslError::UnableToGetLocalIssuerCertificate, but this is rather hacky and could certainly be abused by a man in the middle as well.

Oh what a happy day for Qt users (ever wanted to look at the value of a QString in gdb…?) and what a sad one for all the other free Qt IDEs out there, like edyuk or QDevelop. Especially edyuk looked very promising since it provided a lot of features and a good user interface.

Anyways, if you’re interested in Qt as well and want to get a short (German) introduction, snag the workshop slides from the Stuff page.

• guitone is now licensed under GNU GPL Version 3 or later. Please note that you’re now only allowed to legally distribute binaries which you’ve built with Qt 4.3.4 or later, since earlier versions of Qt are GPLv2-only
• new “driver” interface to call certain dialogs of guitone from the outside, which should help for all sorts of integration wishes ondifferent platforms. A “TortoiseMonotone” project has already been kicked off at the last summit – currently residing on the net.venge.monotone.tortoise branch - and this project is still looking for help from people which are fluent in Python and / or the Windows API
• numerous improvement in workspace handling (faster, prettier, more configurable, yatta, yatta…)
• for a full list of changes check the NEWS file

You can download guitone at the usual location, a win32 installer (yes, we’ll have one!) should follow shortly.

<key>LSUIElement</key>
<string>1</string>

Now, with guitone I recently had the problem that I wanted exactly this mode under OSX in its new “driver” mode, which lets you automate / script the access to internal dialogs (check the nvm.guitone.app-driver branch for more information), but it should not interfere with the “standalone” mode, i.e. the dock icon and menu bar should be of course shown there.

One way of accomplishing that would have been to create a separate binary just for this usage and only set the setting in this property list. However, even without knowing much of OSX’ Carbon API, I came up with a better solution, inspired by what Qt does itself deep inside qapplication_mac.cpp if it stumbles upon the LSUIElement entry:

GuitoneStandalone::GuitoneStandalone(int & argc, char** argv)

GuitoneCore(argc, argv), {

ifdef Q_WS_MACX

ProcessSerialNumber psn; if (GetCurrentProcess(&psn) == noErr) { TransformProcessType(&psn, kProcessTransformToForegroundApplication); }

endif

... } This unconditionally transforms such a background application to a foreground application with a dock icon and menu bar. So all I had to do was to check my calling arguments if the driver interface should be used and if not, create the correct QApplication instance which brings the application to the foreground. Nice!

Now I only have to fix this one, very weird behaviour of QMetaMethod::invokeMethod which does not accept my argument list… grumbles